Take the Black Live: Is Ned Stark the stupidest character in A Song of Ice and Fire?

Hello, dear readers and watchers, and welcome to another episode of WiC Take the Black Live, the weekly show where we break down the latest Game of Thrones news, as well as walk through chapters of A Song of Ice and Fire, one at a time. Watch the new episode above!

First, let me draw your attention to some changes that have happened around here. We’ve changed names. We used to be WiC Live. Now we’re Take the Black Live, Take the Black being the name of our long-running Game of Thrones podcast. In that vein, we’re bottling the audio from the live Take the Black show and making it available wherever podcasts can be found! We’re on iTunes and Google Play. So if you’d prefer to hear rather than watch us, please head there. Likes are appreciated.

Okay, on to the episode. First, we hit the news: new pictures from the Winterfell set, new pictures from Magheramorne Quarry, new comments on the possibility of multiple endings…as usual, the world is abuzz with talk of Game of Thrones season 8. We also gave away a pair of tickets to see the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience, so congratulations to the winner!

Then, at 14:30, we bring in Josh Hill to continue out recurring segment, A Song of Dan and Josh, wherein Josh Hill and I read through A Song of Ice and Fire. This week, we have a meaty discussion about Eddard VII, an eventful chapter from A Game of Thrones. Here’s the isolated part of the episode below:

Questions include:

• How does George R.R. Martin use our expectations to trick us into believing Ned Stark will survive the books?
• In what ways does A Song of Ice and Fire subvert traditional, King Arthur-y stories about knights and dragons and so forth?
• What do we make of Martin’s monstrous characterization of Gregor “the Mountain” Clegane?
• In retrospect, is Ned Stark the stupidest character in the series?

I’m having a lot of fun reading these chapters in more detail, and we hope you are, too. We’ll be back this Wednesday at 4:00 p.m. with more news and more chapter walk-throughs. We’ve got Tyrion IV and Arya III on tap. Hope to see you there!

Next: Winter is here with this new White Walker figure from ThreeZero

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